No, this can't be how a democracy works. You can't vote in a party, then have the other parties team up and make a coalition government! A month ago, everybody hated Stephane Dion, and the Liberals lost a percentage of their party support in the vote (2 months ago). Gilles Duceppe can't even be voted for in the rest of the country, so why the hell would we want him running it? Jack Layton's alright, but it's basically up to Dion and Duceppe, and they won't be able to agree on a goddamn thing. How in the hell is this good for our country, and isn't it some sort of violation of the principles of democracy for these morons to make a decision like this without a vote?

AaaaahhhhHHHH SHIT Elizabeth May, the green party leader is cutting deals with them too, as long as she can be appointed to the senate! Holy shit, obviously she's not capable of running a country if she wants a job in the senate. They don't do ANYTHING!

I'm so riled up about this. If this goes down, honestly, I'll buy a plane ticket to ottawa and vandalize every fucking inanimate object in the whole city.

Sober wrote:Where should I go to get a quick, easy-to-grasp breakdown of what's going on? I have a couple Canadian friends, and they don't even really know, but they assure me that it's "fucked up."

What's going on is the Canadian PM has taken the rather dictatorial step of asking the Governor-General to suspend Parliament to avoid being kicked out on his arse by a "no-confidence" motion.

Contrary to our young friend Reisty's fears :"No, this can't be how a democracy works. You can't vote in a party, then have the other parties team up and make a coalition government!" -

That is in fact exactly how a constitutional monarchy under the Westminster system works, and the current government, being a minority government, was only allowed to form a government with the cooperation of other parties.

Somebody needs to remind Mr Harper that he does not actually have Presidential powers and that he only has leave to form a government with the support of a majority of the Parliament. If he loses that support - Parliament is dissolved and he is out on his arse.

I know nothing about the parties or politicians involved - but my initial reading of the thing makes me feel that the Governor-General has probably acted unconstitutionally in suspending Parliament just to protect a politician.

Caravan Ray wrote:I know nothing about the parties or politicians involved - but my initial reading of the thing makes me feel that the Governor-General has probably acted unconstitutionally in suspending Parliament just to protect a politician.

No, the Gov-Gen is acting in the interests of Canadians. If you had been here when this was going down, you'd realize that nobody (except for my sister's hippie chem teacher) wanted a coalition govt. If they released a ballot that had Harper on one side, and a coalition led by Stephane Dion (a terrible leader that lost huge liberal support in the last election), Jack Layton as the Finance Minister (an NDP whose party has control over only 37 seats), and the separatist Gilles Duceppe (who can only be voted for in Quebec - why would the rest of us want him running our country? - though he still has more seats than the NDP), there's no way the coalition would garner enough votes to take over.

Honestly, there is no way this coalition could work, and Canadians all across the country were united in uproar. It's obviously not in the interest of the general population, so I think the Governor-General made a good choice.

The Liberal party has dominated Canadian politics for most of the last several decades. Eventually, over the course of many years, they became (and were exposed as) ridiculously bloated, corrupt, lazy, and incompetent.

In January 2006, the Conservative party won power away from the Liberals, but they only won a minority government. In other words, the Conservatives won the most seats of any party, but the other major parties--that's the liberals, the socialist NDP, and the separatist Bloc (who want Quebec to split off from the rest of Canada)--had more seats combined than the Conservatives. This forces the Conservatives to cooperate with the opposition, because if the opposition loses "confidence" in the Conservatives, they can force a new election.

Sure enough, the opposition parties lost confidence, and this past October, there was another election. The Conservatives won even more seats than before, and the Liberals had their worst showing in something like 40 years. However, the Conservatives still came up shy of a majority government.

The week before last, driven mad by not being in power, the Liberals announced that they have formed a coalition with the socialist NDP and the separatist Bloc (their own enemies), in order to vote "no confidence" on the Conservatives, and instead of holding an election, asking the Governor General to let them combine their seats together and simply become the new government. In other words, the ruling party will become the opposition, and all three opposition parties will become the government--totally unprecedented in Canadian history.

Now, our Governor General has essentially two options: she can make history and grant the coalition power, or she can force our third national election in as many years which will cost $300 million (that's a lot of money in Canada) and, according to all polls, result in the Conservatives winning again anyway. So, rather than making a choice between these two terrible options right away, she has delayed parliament for several weeks so that the Conservatives can basically work on winning back the confidence of the opposition parties by, primarily, including their ideas and demands in the 2009 national budget.

If the opposition finds the budget acceptable, they might back down from their coalition power-grab and save Canada from an extremely bitter (and arguably undemocratic) transition of power that, As Reist says, nobody here wants anyway.

Get this--as part of the coalition's proposal, the leader of the Liberal party will become the new Prime Minister. The hitch is that the Liberals are planning to shitcan their current leader before Christmas (since he lost the last election so badly in October), and there are two contenders currently fighting for the Liberal leadership. In other words, not only do they expect us poor Canadians to accept the ouster of our democratically-elected leader, they want to replace him with someone yet-to-be-decided. It's ludicrous!

Reïst wrote:No, the Gov-Gen is acting in the interests of Canadians. If you had been here when this was going down, you'd realize that nobody (except for my sister's hippie chem teacher) wanted a coalition govt. If they released a ballot that had Harper on one side, and a coalition led by Stephane Dion (a terrible leader that lost huge liberal support in the last election), Jack Layton as the Finance Minister (an NDP whose party has control over only 37 seats), and the separatist Gilles Duceppe (who can only be voted for in Quebec - why would the rest of us want him running our country? - though he still has more seats than the NDP), there's no way the coalition would garner enough votes to take over.

Honestly, there is no way this coalition could work, and Canadians all across the country were united in uproar. It's obviously not in the interest of the general population, so I think the Governor-General made a good choice..

I am not questioning your assessment of the political situation in any way – as I said, I have no idea who any of these clowns are. But legally, it all looks pretty dodgy.

You said:” the Gov-Gen is acting in the interests of Canadians”

A G-G has no right to be making political decisions at all – whether they think it is acting in the interests of Canadians or not. That is not the G-G’s job, and being an unelected titular head-of-state – the G-G has no mandate to make such a decision.

Parliament is the only body that has the mandate and the power to make such decisions, and it appears that your Parliament was about to cast a vote of no-confidence against the Government. The G-G has no place interfering in that. It is an abuse of their reserve powers

Melvin wrote:Now, our Governor General has essentially two options: she can make history and grant the coalition power, or she can force our third national election in as many years.

Almost, but not exactly right. Your G-G can not “grant the coalition power”. That is not the power of the G-G. The G-G can ask the party, or a coalition of parties with a majority of seats in Parliament to form a Government. That is not “granting power”. Power comes from having the numbers in Parliament. And if the Parliament has no confidence in the Government – then either that Government should resign or the G-G should use their reserve powers to dissolve Parliament.

Melvin wrote:It's ludicrous!.

Yes – I agree. But that’s still no reason for a PM to place himself above the Parliament with the G-G’s approval. You guys have been too close to the USA for too long. It’s starting to rub off.

Semantics. Okay, the GG can allow the coalition to take power, or can call an election. I have a hard time imagining any situation in which calling an election would not be the preferred option, since it would allow the people to speak and the new government to actually have a mandate. But considering that our last election was about six weeks ago, I'd say these coalition a-holes have put the GG in an extremely awkward position, wouldn't you?

Forget the U.S.-style election conspiracy theories. The current PM doesn't fear another election, because, he'll win. Again. Like he did six weeks ago!

Yeah, yeah, we have a democratically elected parliament. But ask anyone--they vote for the PM.

The worst part of this is, for the most part, that Canadian politics plays out in the East, and their main objective is to rape Western Canada, due to our natural resources. Our vote doesn't really count, which is why I'm anarchist all the way.

like a shark riding on an elephant's back, trampling and devouring everything in its path